Asleep At The Wheel

Take Me Back To Tulsa

In these times when absolutely every note that Bob Wills, Milton Brown, and Cliff Bruner recorded is available on Bear Family and other labels, it's worth remembering that, in 1973, western swing was woefully hard to find on records. A few various artists' compilations and budget albums were about the extent of it. Bob Wills' then-current albums on Kapp were no incentive for anyone to go in search of his music; a bigger incentive came from Merle Haggard's 1970 album 'Tribute To The Best Damn Fiddle Player In The World.' The San Francisco western swing/honky tonk revival noted by a 'Billboard'correspondent in mid-1972 had already seen revivalist albums with a counter-culture twist released by Dan Hicks and Commander Cody. Just behind them came Asleep at the Wheel. On the east coast, they'd opened for Alice Cooper and other acts before the Commander told them to come west. "I demoed Asleep at the Wheel for Jerry Wexler at Atlantic," said group leader Ray Benson. "We sent it in and I got it back and he said, 'It's very nice but the lead guitar player needs work.' He was right. So I went to work." Then, in aninterview a couple of years later, Van Morrison said, "...there's some relatively unknown group around that I really dig. Asleep at the Wheel plays great country music." That was enough to send the record labels in search of the Wheel. Former Cricket Tommy Allsup landed the deal for United Artists.

Like many of Bob Wills' best and best-known songs, Take Me Back To Tulsa had been a fiddle tune, known as Take Me Back To Texas before Wills moved to KVOO Tulsa. He recorded it during several days of Dallas sessions in February 1941 that resulted in a plethora of transcendently great music. Of course, Ray Benson couldn't hope to match the droll, inebriate charm of Wills' vocalist, Tommy Duncan. Who could? Soon after the Wheel's first LP came out, Willie Nelson persuaded them to join the nascent Austin scene. "He heard this young band, a long-haired band, was playing Bob Wills' music," Ray Benson said later. "He was just very curious. That was in '73, and he was one of the guys who convinced me to move to Texas. We were living in California at the time. He put us on shows and introduced us around." Forty-two years and one hundred band members later, Asleep at the Wheel is still at it, and still based in Austin. Their 2009 album with Nelson, 'Willie And The Wheel,' reached #13 on the country album charts and won a Grammy.